304 THE EULOGY OF RICHARD JEFFERIES. 



cannot your people have us without so much 

 labour, and why are so many of you unhappy ? 

 Why cannot they be all happy with us as you 

 are, dear? For hundreds and hundreds of 

 years now the wheat every year has been 

 sorrowful for your people, and I think we 

 get more sorrowful every year about it, 

 because, as I was telling you just now, the 

 flowers go, and the swallows go, the old, old 

 oaks go, and that oak will go, under the shade 

 of which you are lying, Guido ; and if your 

 people do not gather the flowers now, and 

 watch the swallows, and listen to the black- 

 birds whistling, as you are listening now while 

 I talk, then Guido, my love, they will never 

 pick any flowers, nor hear any birds' songs. 

 They think they will, they think that when 

 they have toiled, and worked a long time, 

 almost all their lives, then they will come to 

 the flowers, and the birds, and be joyful in 

 the sunshine. But no, it will not be so, for 

 then they will be old themselves, and their 

 ears dull, and their eyes dim, so that the birds 

 will sound a great distance off, and the flowers 

 will not seem bright. 



